


Veni, Vidi, Vinum

by beautifultoastdream



Category: Rome (TV 2005)
Genre: Afterlife, Character Study, Gen, Humor, One for the road, Referenced Character Deaths, Stealth Crossover, bad language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-21
Updated: 2017-07-21
Packaged: 2018-12-04 23:37:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11565732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beautifultoastdream/pseuds/beautifultoastdream
Summary: Titus Pullo has died. Well, it had to happen sooner or later. Now, instead of the gates of Pluto's realm, he finds himself facing a mysterious tavern with an unending wine supply and one very irritable dead Greek. It seems Pullo will have to make a choice--and ask himself what fate he really deserves. Character study, drama/humor, lots of swearing.





	Veni, Vidi, Vinum

This is a tavern, of a sort. The two men sitting at the bar are the sorts who have doubtless seen many taverns before—from almost decent watering holes where the whores were washed and the dice not always loaded (the best their sort could expect, they would be the first to admit), to the muddy tents in the middle of yet another god-forsaken field, where the wine was almost vinegar and sometimes cut with the stinking green water of the well they'd cleaned a dead man's boots in—many taverns, and many drinks brewed from the gods only knew what. But this room is clean, unnaturally so, and they are the only two present there.

One is taller than the other, but only just. He is dressed in the ragged remains of a tunic. The fabric is rough and badly woven, and the tunic itself is barely more than a sack, but it is nevertheless covered with an incongruously rich red cloak. A white leather quiver rests at his feet, and his hair and beard are gray. The clay cup in front of him contains, by his choice, a potently vicious Scythian brew that very few outsiders have ever willingly drunk. They are mostly put off by the fermented mare's milk.

The other sits quietly, hunched over the bar in front of him, still looking dazed and drinking seemingly because he has nothing else to do. The wine he is gulping is of the finest quality, but he seems not to register its taste or smell as he swills it down. Unlike his companion, who has the color of a Greek but the features of a steppe man, this one appears Roman. His close-shorn head and crude eagle tattoo speak to a life spent in the legions, and the scars on his skull are eloquently deep.

One more gulp, and the cup—made of solid silver, set with diamonds—is empty. The broad-shouldered man sets it down and, seemingly for the first time, looks around. His brown eyes take in the unnaturally clean room and his silent companion, who looks as if he's been through a war.

“So I'm dead, then.” It isn't a question.

The long-haired man nods and sets down his own cup.

Titus Pullo taps his silver goblet's edge against the gleaming wood. It makes a solid sort of noise. He taps again, just to be sure.

“Sounds real enough,” he says. A nervous sort of grin appears on his face; he is clearly uncomfortable. “Not that I'd have anything to judge it by, mind you,” he adds. His companion says nothing. Pullo taps it once more for good measure. The silence from his fellow drinker seems to unnerve him, and he endeavors to fill it in his usual manner. “Can't say as I've ever been dead before. But then, never had a silver cup neither. Don't reckon they make any different sounds back down—” He is unsure how to continue, and settles for waving his free hand vaguely. “You know.”

The other drinker apparently does not, as he has yet to respond. Pullo puts the cup down and puts a hand on the other man's shoulder. “Hey. Hey. D'you speak Latin?”

“No,” says the man, in perfect Latin.

Pullo laughs. “You're drunk.”

“Not unless I want to be.” The man swivels in his chair, turning to face Pullo with his own cup still in hand. “Yes, you're dead. What d'you want, Hades at the door? Dancing skeletons?” He takes a deep swallow of his drink. It's a sickly yellow color that Pullo has seen before, but in those cases, the dog usually didn't recover.

“Well, it'd be nice,” Pullo says, shrugging. Normally, he is not one given to subtlety, but the events of the last few hours have put him in a cautious mood.

He remembers getting up in the morning, stretching and yawning, still aching from sleep. Aeneas (Cesarion that was) would be visiting again, bothering him again about his woman. He laughs, remembering that, even as the other man watches him intently. Boys grow up so fast. It's odd to think of him as the arrogant little princeling he'd hauled arse-first out of Egypt, years before.

A wash. A shave, navigating the planes of flesh that had grown a little more sunken and sagging over the years. Breakfast with Vorena the Younger and her family. A walk down the Aventine to the butcher shop, where he wields a cleaver instead of a sword. And then—a pain in the chest, as sure as if he were stabbed through the heart. A stumble, a fall into the gutter. Darkness.

And then a tavern, a cup of wine far finer than anything he has ever had before, a mysterious companion, and an energy and vigor he hasn't felt in years.

Titus Pullo is not, fair to say, a religious man. This is not because he does not believe in gods; it is because he believes that many of the gods are about obeying and living a good life, and he does not think he is the sort of person that the gods will have truck with. Sometimes they help him, and sometimes he sacrifices to them, and always he speaks to them without having recourse to a priest or any other idiot in a fancy hat. He can't deny that crimes of all descriptions are at his door, and if the bloody poets are good for anything, then he knows that Pluto's domain is supposed to be for men like him. Drifting always in the Styx, never at rest and unable to remember their names. He doesn't recall if the poets mentioned anything about damn good wine.

The other man does not appear aware of the wandering train of Pullo's thoughts. “I'd tell you what would be nice,” he says. “Just once, I'd like to meet someone 'round here who doesn't spend their first few minutes babbling about how they're dead. When I was under arms, we didn't piss and moan about death. Come back with your shield or on it, right? Not that I got a fucking shield.” He reaches out, and a large clay jug fades into existence an inch from his hand. He pours himself a fresh cupful of the foul yellow stuff, seemingly unfazed by the oddity of the whole business.

Pullo barks out a nervous laugh. “So we get free refills then, eh?”

“Reckon you'd call 'em that. It's only free until you get through the door.” The bearded man slurps at his drink.

“Door? What door?”

“The door out, you fucking halfwit. What, d'you think this is all there is to the afterlife? Getting shitfaced in some celestial tavern?” The man gesticulates with the cup, spilling half of his drink in the process. It fades away before it even hits the floor. “Blessed Na'an, why do I get the all the fucking Romans?”

At that, Pullo bristles. “Well, who the fuck are you then, eh? From the looks of you, you're a fucking mongrel. Maybe even Greek. Who's to say my people haven't got yours under their boot right about now, then?”

“If they do, it's no concern of mine.” Another wave of the hand, and the clay jug reappears. He pours another brimming cupful and mops his filthy beard on the back of his hand. “But I wouldn't reckon on it, friend. My people are Scythians. And my adopted folk—Spartans.”

“Cack!” Pullo says with his usual charming frankness. “There's no bloody Sparta any more. And you don't look like any Scythian I've ever met. You're not covered in shit, for one.”

To his surprise, the man laughs at that—or snorts, rather, into the foul concoction that he's drinking. “Close enough for all that,” he says. “No Sparta any more, then? When did that happen?”

“Well on over a hundred years ago. You're an ugly bastard, but you can't be that old.”

The man takes a deep breath. “Don't trust Time here, friend. She's a lying cunt, that one.” He waves a hand lazily, making a gesture that Pullo recognizes as some vague bastardization of the legionnaires' salute. “ _Salve,_ then, Roman dogfucker. My name is … Hmm. Met a Roman once who called me Suicaederius. You people never could get any of my names right.”

“Suicide.” Pullo laughs at that. “What'd you do to go and get yourself called Suicide, you poor bastard?”

“Among other things? I was at Thermopylae.”

“Gerrae!”

“On my mother's honor and my father's horse.” Suicide drains his cup again, but puts it down instead of refilling it. “You're dead now, friend. You're bound to meet a lot of people, and they're not all as obliging as me. That's why they put me in here, you know.” He waves a hand to the four walls of the tavern. “Go stand at the door, Suicide. We'll send you the old soldiers, Suicide. Fuck the lot of 'em.”

Pullo laughs. “If you were at Thermopylae, then what the fuck're you doing on guard duty, then? Shouldn't you be off in Elysium eating songbirds out of your enemies' skulls or something like that? Bit of a comedown for a big fancy hero, stuck outside like this. What'd you do, then? Piss on Iris's rainbow?”

“Fuck off,” Suicide responds, though without apparent malice. Pullo can guess that he's done this many, many times before. “I was there, but it didn't balance my slate with the men upstairs.”

“So you _did_ piss on the rainbow.” Pullo glances around, wondering if there's anything to eat. A bowl of fresh olives appears at his elbow, and he bites into one appreciatively, noticing that the pits have already been removed. Nice, that.

“Something like it. They couldn't have me in Elysium, but they couldn't cast me into Lethewaters either, so they have me minding the door here.” Suicide steals an olive, dodging the punch that Pullo throws. “I'm here for the soldiers, see. Give 'em a choice.”

“What's the choice, then?” Pullo says, shifting the olive bowl so the dirty Scythian can't steal any more.

“Go or stay.”

“The hell's that supposed to mean?”

“Exactly what it says on the jar.” Suicide pops the stolen olive into his mouth. “Go or stay. There's one door, the Way Out, but as a soldier you've a choice. You can go through the door, move on into whatever fate you've earned for yourself, or you can stay here in the tavern and drink for eternity.”

That gets a grin from Pullo. “Nice of 'em to be obliging that way, eh? All those sacrifices must've counted for something.”

For the first time, Pullo sees his strange dark companion show a twitch of temper. The man's brows furrow, and his lips flare, showing just a hint of unnaturally sharpened teeth. Scythians: barbarians, all of 'em.

“It doesn't work that way,” he says, and his voice has an edge to it. “You don't understand, do you?”

“Well, what's there to understand? Wander around as a shade in Pluto's kingdom, or drink damned good wine for all time? I can't see the harm there.” Pullo twists his neck towards the door. “Who else comes in here?”

“No one.”

“No one?”

“No one. That's the bargain.” Suicide puts down his cup. “You've the choice to stay, but that door is only the Way Out. There's no Way In.”

Pullo's face falls. “Well, what's the point of that, then? Fat lot of good that'll do me, sitting here with only your sorry face for company.” Suicide chucks his clay cup at him, but it vanishes before it comes within a foot of Pullo. “Oi! Try that again, and I'll have you!”

“Have you been a good man, Titus Pullo?” the Scythian says.

Pullo opens his mouth to respond, but stops. Has he?

These past twenty years he's faithfully guarded his old friend's family, watching Vorena the Younger grow into a beauty with her own husband and children. He's given a new name and life to the lost son of Cleopatra, and he's done his damned best to be a decent sort—aye, there's been some drinking and some fighting, but what's a man without a bit of that, eh? He _has_ been a good man.

Of late. But he remembers earlier times, when there was not so much gray in his hair and yet no damned trephination scar on his scalp, with all the rapine and plunder and killing that came with war under the standard. He'll not say it was wrong, no, but he's been the cause of a great many shed tears in his time. And later on, there had been Aufidius Dento—bad business, that. “Murderer! Murderer!” And somehow worse, just before that, there was that damned stripling of a slave … shaking his hand and swearing that he would marry Eirene …

Eirene. His heart clenches in his chest.

“I don't rightly know,” he says finally. “And that's the fact of it.”

The Scythian doesn't smile, but the dark look on his face begins to disappear. “That's the only answer that matters, here,” he says. He gestures vaguely to the air, and a round of bread appears in front of Pullo. It's the good bread—true Roman bread for true Romans—but Pullo doesn't touch it. His appetite seems to have vanished for some reason.

“What have I earned?” he said slowly. “What's … who's on the other side of that door?”

Suicide shakes his head. “I don't know. Nobody knows until they pass through.”

“So what's the damned point?” Pullo demands. His confusion is growing, and he feels the familiar rush of anger that so often accompanies it. “I can sit here on my arse and drink with some sorry Greek slave for all eternity, or I can go through a door that for all I know leads to the damned Furies themselves! Some bloody choice, that!”

“It's a gift,” Suicide repeats. “Others don't even have the choice.” He sips his hellbrew, ignoring Pullo's flabbergasted expression. “Think of it. No hero, you, by the look of it—” Pullo feels another flash of anger, but it quickly dies. He always did look a ruffian, he knows. “--and no deep-dyed villain either. But you marched for whatever slave drivers you considered your betters, and you must have had some form of loyalty to them, or you wouldn't be here. Do you know how often soldiers pray?”

“Well—” Pullo hasn't honestly thought about it in years. “I always did my praying on my own. Then there's the prayers on parade, of course, and the sacrifices, and I suppose the augurs doing their business count. Though it's all one to me on that last one, honest; gods are always mysterious sorts, but if they want us mortals to do what they want, I always reckoned they'd be a little clearer than leaving messages in chicken guts.”

“Wrong. Although I agree on the chicken guts.” Suicide shakes his head a little. “Soldiers always pray, Titus Pullo. Every time you ever marched into battle, every screaming skirmish against whatever people had the bad luck to be in the way of Rome's big fat boot that day—didn't you ever say to yourself, 'gods help me, I don't want to die?' It's a prayer, of a sort.” He shrugs, seemingly amused by the notion. “By that reckoning, soldiers are far more devout than any priest. A soldier carries his gods with him, because he knows he needs them more than a merchant or a farmer. A soldier is the most pious of men, and so he has this choice as his reward. Whether he likes it or not.”

“You _are_ a Greek,” Pullo says, shaking his head. “That's philosophy, ain't it? You went and caught fucking philosophy, you poor bastard.”

“Pity other things can't travel the same way. The only thing you're catching is flies with that fat mouth of yours.”

Pullo snorts. “So because I was a legionnaire, I get this 'gift?' Shit way of thanking a man for his years of service to the standard, making him sit and drink with a sour-faced dead man.”

“Na'an give me patience with Roman morons,” Suicide moans. “How sure are you that you've earned Elysium? Or Lethewater?”

The legionnaire next to him frowns at the thought. What had he earned? If anything? Can he be sure it's the Styx for him, or have his misdeeds been redeemed by the good done for Aeneas and the Vorenii? It's a nasty thought.

He can stay here, in the Greek's tavern, and possibly deny himself a paradise … and Eirene. Or he can move forward and risk Pluto's wrath. 

“Oh,” he says. Suicide raises his eyes to the heavens, as if begging for strength from gods who, well, probably aren't above them any more. Pullo glances around nervously, just in case Janus or Demeter decides to appear behind them. Nothing: it's only them, the four walls, and the endless supply of wine.

“Well,” he adds, “one more for the road, then. Got any Caecuban?”

A carafe of wine obligingly appears, and he fills his cup to the brim, ignoring the surprised expression on his drinking companion's face. Despite the fear curdling in his gut, there's a tinge of satisfaction now too. Hah! Take that, Greek slave. He's Titus fucking Pullo, ain't he?

“You mean you're going?” Suicide says carefully. “You do understand what I've told you, don't you?”

“I'm not stupid.” Pullo gulps the wine with approval. Mmmm. A simple legionnaire like him, the son of a slave-woman, can go a year or more without even smelling the thick, sweet Caecuban wine that all the Patricians love so much. And here it is, a whole jug of it just for him, and more where that came from if he just chooses to stay.

But dog's balls to _that,_ thank you very much.

Suicide is still looking surprised, his own cup of foul yellow brew forgotten, while Pullo finishes his cup, burps in approval, and refills it. “Sure you're not stupid?” the Scythian says after a moment, leaning back a little to avoid the fumes of Pullo's breath. “I thought Romans prided themselves on sound thinking.”

“None of that,” Pullo responds as cheerfully as he can. “What's the point in me hanging about, eh? Drinking with you 'til I go mad myself and start catching philosophy to boot. If there's a bad on the other side …” He shrugs. “I'm only delaying the charge, ain't I? I'll go through that door one way or another, and be happy to do it after looking at your ugly face for a couple of weeks. If I'm punished, I'm punished.”

“And if you're not?” Suicide says curiously. He tilts his head, and Pullo thinks he detects something in the craggy face. It reminds him of Vorenus, a long time ago in the Egyptian desert, talking of Niobe. “What d'you think you'll see?”

“Beautiful women that don't want payment,” Pullo says around the next mouthful of Caecuban. Or maybe a road, leading to the land of the gods from beyond the Rhine. He hopes for a sword to help him on the way, but it doesn't appear, and he prays just a little that that's a good sign.

“Of course.” Suicide doesn't appear to believe him. “Because that's all you Romans think about, isn't it?”

Pullo doesn't rise to the bait. “What else is there?” he says cheerfully, putting down the cup and rising. No sense putting it off. It's Pluto, or it's Eirene, and to hell with sour philosophers in stolen cloaks.

The Scythian watches him, almost hungrily, as Pullo strides across to the door and puts his hand on the latch. It's a plain thing, wood with a few phrases carved into it—'Achaeus was here,' 'Dalmatiana on Esquiline sucks cock for copper,' and one particularly inspired poet has declared in scratched writing that 'Cerberus, like all of Pluto's dogs, loves balls.'

It amuses Pullo, just a little, to think that it may be the last words to cross his mind. He opens the door, makes a gesture for the Scythian that transcends both their languages in its simplicity and color, and steps through into enveloping warmth.

 

* * *

 

Silently, Suicide watches him go. As the door clicks closed behind the ignorant Roman pig, he raises his eyes to the ceiling again—because whether or not gods dwell there now, he has no intention of breaking his old habits just to please them—and frowns.

“Were you trying to tell me something just then?” he says to the ceiling. “That smelled like the lessons your sorts like.”

Nobody answers him. Suicide sighs and puts down his cup. “Then how about another round, eh?” he adds as the door creaks open again. His cup obediently refills itself. Slumping a little, Suicide takes a deep draught of the afterlife's best kumis and tries not to swear as another mother-humping legionnaire comes loping into the celestial tavern.

Fucking Romans.

**Author's Note:**

> This is actually a crossover. The second character in this fic comes from Steven Pressfield's novel "Gates of Fire." I chose not to tag GoF as a fandom because, as far as I know, there is no fandom for it (alas) and you don't need to know anything about it to understand this story. I heartily recommend the book.
> 
> As for Pullo ... Well, what can I say? I'd like to think I know what's waiting for him on the other side of the door, but it may be better to leave up to the reader's choice.


End file.
